Akbar's Chamber - Experts Talk Islam

The Meanings of Muslim Mysticism: An Introduction to Classical Sufi Texts

Between the eighth and tenth century, a series of profound texts were written in Arabic that explored the deepest, darkest and ultimately the most brightly illuminated corners of the human psyche.  Their authors were the founding figures of the Islamic mystical tradition known as Sufism. But inasmuch as these teachers were mystics, whose prayers and spiritual exercises had yielded extraordinary inner experiences, they were also psychologists whose writings laid bare the both the delights and delusions of the human personality, and the path to its perfection by the annihilation of the ego. Yet in order to share their experiences, and the lessons that were the fruit of them, the Sufis needed to wrestle with another set of issues: the problem of language. And so, after explaining the key terms and concepts of classical Sufism, in this episode we’ll learn how the early Sufi masters tackled the problem of translating mystical experiences into language that ordinary people could understand. Then, turning to our own times, we’ll examine how those Arabic texts can be made comprehensible in English. Fortunately, we’re joined in Akbar’s Chamber by Michael Sells, who has devoted his career to translating classical Arabic and especially Sufi texts. He is the author and translator of Early Islamic Mysticism: Sufi, Qur’an, Mi‘raj, Poetic and Theological Writings (Paulist Press, 1996).

Singapore Islam: How a Commercial Hub became a Muslim Melting Pot

Few people today would think of Singapore as being a religious center, still less a Muslim one. But even before it began its great commercial climb in modern times, the city was already linked to the spiritual and mercantile networks of Indian Ocean Islam. Then, from nineteenth century, Singapore played host to as varied a spectrum of Asian Muslims as might be imagined, whether Yemeni Sufis and merchants, Indian laborers and missionaries, or publishers and miracle workers from across Southeast Asia. From Arabic to Tamil and Malay, these migrants brought along their own traditions and languages, which melded into the many rich expressions of ‘Singapore Islam.’ Nile Green talks to Teren Sevea, author of Miracles and Material Life: Rice, Ore, Traps and Guns in Islamic Malaya (Cambridge University Press, 2020), which won the Harry J. Benda Prize of the Association for Asian Studies.

‘The Master of Illumination’: The Teachings of Suhrawardi

Few philosophers can be said to have been watershed figures, in the wake of whose teachings a tradition of philosophy forever changed its course. Shihab al-Din Suhrawardi was such a figure for the development of Islamic philosophy. Trained in the Aristotelian school of Ibn Sina (known in the West as Avicenna), Suhrawardi nonetheless became a mystical philosopher who not only demonstrated the limits of rational deduction, but also insisted there was an alternative mode of knowledge. This he called ‘ilm al-huzuri—literally ‘knowledge by presence’—that derived from our direct experiences. As a mystic, such experiences included not only the commonsensical realm of ordinary everyday experience. It also included the mystical states that he argued allowed human beings to come into the presence of their own true being and in turn the ultimate Being of God. Both, he claimed, were pure light: divine light that that was at once the basis of all existence and the source of all knowledge. Drawing from the famous Light Verse of the Quran, from his philosophical studies, and from his own mystical experiences, Suhrawardi called his teachings the ‘Wisdom of Illumination’ (hikmat al-ishraq).  Nile Green talks to John Walbridge, author of God and Logic in Islam: The Caliphate of Reason (Cambridge University Press, 2010).

 

God’s Unruly Friends: Rule Breaking World Renouncers of Medieval Islam

According to a famous saying of the Prophet Muhammad, “Poverty is my pride.” Perhaps no group of Muslims took that adage so seriously as the qalandars and other dervishes who not only renounced the comforts of family and domestic life, but also rejected every trace of social respectability. Nothing mattered more to them—they took pride in nothing else—than their vows of complete poverty. For to renounce the world, and punish the flesh through a life of daily discomfort, was the surest way to negate the self and so fully submit to the will of God. Paradoxically, this logic also led them to renounce the Sharia, since they believed poverty turned them into God’s unruly but saintly friends. For their critics, this was hypocrisy at best and heresy at worst. Yet from the Balkans to India, qalandars wandered from town to town and tribe to tribe, winning followers from the lower classes and literati alike by living up to their arduous principles. Nile Green talks to Ahmet Karamustafa, author of God’s Unruly Friends: Dervish Groups in the Islamic Later Middle Period, 1200–1550 (University of Utah Press, 1994).

 

The Salafi Search for Authenticity

Salafism has gained a great deal of media attention over the past twenty years, but for all that remains poorly understood. Part of the reason is a paradox at the heart of the name and goals of the Salafis themselves. In taking their name from the pious ‘ancestors’ (al-salaf)—the first generations of Muslims in the seventh century—the Salafis are deeply concerned with following the original and authentic Islam practiced by those who were closest to the Prophet Muhammad. But since the Salafi movement developed in the twentieth century, it inevitably emerged in modern settings, begging the question of its relationship with modernity. Focusing on the majority non-violent Salafi movements, this episode begins by defining Salafism, before identifying its key concerns—not least with the outward visible expressions of ‘ancestral’ piety that, surprisingly, include wearing shoes within mosques. We’ll then dig deeper into the entanglement of Salafi practices with the no less radical transformations of modernity to which the Salafi Muslims have responded.  Nile Green talks to Aaron Rock-Singer, In the Shade of the Sunna: Salafi Piety in the Twentieth-Century Middle East (University of California Press, 2022).

The Meaning of Muslim Dreams: Landscapes of the Imagination in Egypt

According to a famous saying of the Prophet Muhammad, “A true dream constitutes one forty-sixth part of prophethood.” Over the following centuries, countless Muslim thinkers discussed the hidden problem in that saying: how to distinguish a ‘true dream’ from other kinds of dreams, whether mundane ones caused by illness and indigestion or more worrying ones sent by Satan. Consequently, Muslims developed a rich tradition of dream theory, drawing on sources as varied as ancient Greek texts, Sufi theosophy, and in more recent times European psychology. In this episode, we’ll see how these theories and debates play out in the modern Middle East. Focusing on Egypt, we’ll examine how the dreams of ordinary Muslims are understood by Sufi masters, TV dream interpreters, religious reformists, and secular psychoanalysts. Nile Green talks to Amira Mittermaier, author of Dreams that Matter: Egyptian Landscapes of the Imagination (University of California Press, 2010), which won the Clifford Geertz Prize from the American Academy of Religion.

The Medieval Arabic World of Books: A Tour of a Lost Syrian Library

In this episode we explore the contents of a remarkable medieval library: the Ashrafiya of Damascus. What makes the Ashrafiya important isn’t so much its fame in its own time, but the survival of an extraordinary document: the oldest Arabic library catalogue ever discovered. Using this as our guide, we take a tour of the library, from its location between the eighth century Umayyad mosque and the mausoleum of Saladin’s nephew to the bookshelves placed opposite the windows to avoid the risk of burning lamps. Although the Ashrafiya was far from the largest medieval Arabic library when the catalogue was written in the 1270s, it still held over 2000 books – a number that even the University of Cambridge wouldn’t reach for another century. Still more significant is the sheer variety of subjects it covered, helping us reconstruct the larger intellectual context in which Muslim religious ideas took shape. Nile Green talks to Konrad Hirschler, the author of Medieval Damascus: Plurality and Diversity in an Arabic Library (Edinburgh University Press, 2016), which was awarded the biennial Best Book prize by the Middle East Medievalists society. It is available open-access here: https://www.academia.edu/13464354/Medieval_Damascus_Plurality_and_Diversity_in_an_Arabic_Library_-_The_Ashrafiya_Library_Catalogue

Comparing Christianity & Islam: Debating Religions in the Age of Print

Usually in Akbar’s Chamber we pursue questions of inter-religious understanding. But in this episode, we explore its flip side by way of the religious misunderstandings—and plain disagreements—between Christians and Muslims which were amplified in modern period by the spread of printing through the Middle East. After outlining the context in which Muslim scholars began both debating Christianity and debating with Christian missionaries, we’ll turn to a case study of an especially important figure in the Muslim public sphere: Rashid Rida (1865-1935). By examining his sources of information on Christianity, we’ll see the curious co-dependence of Christian and Muslim scholars who increasingly relied on the same sources of information, and misinformation. Nile Green talks to Prof. Umar Ryad (Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Leuven in Belgium and the Director of the Leuven Centre for the Study of Islam, Culture and Society). He is he the author of Islamic Reformism and Christianity: A Critical Reading of the Works of Muhammad Rashid Rida and his Associates (1898-1935) (Leiden: Brill, 2009), which is available open-access here: https://brill.com/view/title/16450

 

Rediscovering and Reconnecting: How the Hui Muslims of China Encountered their Co-Religionists

Studies of 19th and 20th century Chinese history often focus on Christian missionary activities in China. But the same period saw members of China’s Hui (or Sino-Muslim) community reconnect with their co-religionists overseas. Armed with knowledge of Arabic, Persian, and Urdu, and trained in new religious schools overseas, these Hui scholars began to "rediscover" aspects of Islam and in the process rewrite the history of Islam in China both for audiences within China and for non-Chinese audiences elsewhere. In this episode, we examine why these Sino-Muslim exchanges with colonial India and Egypt took place and explore some of the implications for Islam in China. Yiming Ha of the Chinese History Podcast talks to Nile Green, the regular host of Akbar’s Chamber, about some of the themes of his new book, How Asia Found Herself: A Story of Intercultural Understanding (Yale University Press, fall 2022). This episode is a collaboration with The Chinese History Podcast.

The Other Shi‘ites: Recreating Karbala in Pakistan and India

Shi‘ism is usually thought of in relation to the Middle East, especially Iran and Iraq. But India and Pakistan have a combined population of up to 50 million Shi‘ite Muslims. While venerating the sacred history of the battle of Karbala—where the third Shi‘i imam Husayn was martyred in 680 CE—these Indian and Pakistani Shi‘ites have developed their own rich regional traditions, especially in terms of ceremonies, buildings, and material culture. Such is the aesthetic and emotional appeal of these traditions that they have also attracted not only Sunni participants, but even certain Hindus, such as the centuries-old community of Husayni Brahmins. In this episode, we’ll learn about the rituals, relics, and sacred sites through which the Shi‘is of South Asia and their non-Shi‘i sympathizers annually recreate Karbala in cities and villages across the subcontinent. Nile Green talks to Karen Ruffle (Associate Professor of History of Religions at the University of Toronto), the author of Everyday Shiʿism in South Asia (Wiley-Blackwell, 2021).

One Islam or Many? Making Sense of the Varieties of Islam

“Two facts confront someone studying Islam. One is the astounding variety of practices and beliefs that from place to place and time to time are considered to be Islam. The other is that Muslims, despite their manifest differences in practice and belief, tend to recognize one another as fellow Muslims”.  So writes Kevin Reinhart in explaining the problem that confronts anyone, Muslim or non-Muslim, in facing the visible facts of Islam in practice. In this episode, we explore ways to make sense of what is at once the plurality and unity of lived Islam. By using the analogy of language, we see how Islam can be interpreted as being ‘like’ a language that has ‘dialect’ features and ‘shared’ (or koiné) features, as well as a ‘standard’ version that, like the English of grammatical textbooks, isn’t necessarily followed by most speakers of English. Nile Green talks to A. Kevin Reinhart (Associate Professor of Religion at Dartmouth College), the author of Lived Islam: Colloquial Religion in a Cosmopolitan Tradition (Cambridge University Press, 2020).

From ‘Failed States’ to ‘Hidden Caliphs’: How Muslim Scholar-Saints became Pillars of Social Order

In this episode we’ll explore the history of a ‘hidden caliphate’ through which scholar-saints of the Naqshbandi Sufi order provided social stability during times of tremendous political upheaval. The Sufis in question were followers of Ahmad Sirhindi, who in the years after his death in 1624 – or 1034 in the Muslim calendar – designated him as the ‘Renewer of the Second Millennium.’ In the following centuries, his network expanded from northern India through Afghanistan to Central Asia, Russia and China, bringing his teachings to men and women from every rank of society. We’ll explore the doctrines, both moral and mystical, practical and spiritual, that enabled these ‘scholar-saints’ to maintain social order and justice after the tumultuous collapse of the Mughal Empire. Nile Green talks to Waleed Ziad, the author of Hidden Caliphate: Sufi Saints Beyond the Oxus and Indus (Harvard University Press, 2021).